GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #56

Brant Guillory, 24 October 2014

Not another GARPA!

War & Seas (Wargame Process Edition)P500 for $49, or 39€

There’s a definite ‘ooh and ahh’ factor to this one. It’s an age-of-sail slugfest with a build-your-own-ship twist. You kit out your ship by the use of mix-and-match blacks that represent cannons, crew, officers, etc. and the blast away. The combat dice are not normal d6s either; they are multi-symbol faces that apply numbers to the actions you’ve chose. It’s a small fleet action with built-in multiplayer support, and well, did we mention it looks cool? Go get a p500 order in now and get this thing made already!

Gallic War (GMT Games)P500 price $56 – made the cut

Well, that took about 11 hours. Volko and GMT drop a new COIN series game on the world, and the mad dash to the p500 site resembles Wal-Mart on Black Friday morning. But without the pepper spray. What’s different about this COIN game? Can you say “Caesar”? That’s right. This one gives you the Roman occupation of Gaul as they try to pacify the tribes in their nominally-conquered territories. You know you’re going to pledge it; why are you still reading this?

Bounce around the world as a globehopping agent in this point-to-point card-driven adventure game of secret squirrel shenanigans. Send your spies out on ops that recruit assets, sabotage your opponents, and occasionally pick fights. There aren’t a lot of pledge levels, but the stretch goals look pretty nifty, and the feedback on the prototype games has been excellent. If you’re looking for a little conflict for the family game night, and something everyone can join, get to Kickstarter and pledge now.

They’re not quite as cool as actual 3d minis, but the themed packs from FPM offer a tremendous value in terms of minis-per-dollar. $25 gets you 1 themed pack, and you can see from the picture of The Grove theme pack below that it’s not an insignificant amount of figures. They’re plastic standups with clearly-defined front/back images to establish facing on a grid. The themed packs include townsfolk, underground, and ancient evils, and stretch goals will unlock more themed packs. As to why there’s still a lot of ‘blanks’ in the artwork samples? Most of the higher pledge values let you pick the character or figure to be included, so pledge your dineros at their Kickstarter site, and help flesh out the final round of the figures all at the same time.